Artist story: Louise Heighes

Finding new and exciting talent is what is excites us here at ESTILA. That’s why we’re super excited to be the first to introduce you to Louise Heighes, a 3D leather artist, who creates highly desirable sculptural pieces of 3D leather art. She has a background in textile design, having worked for many years for fashion companies such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel.

Here she fell in love with working with leather, designing experimental leather concepts for their accessory ranges and new material designs for their shows and ready to wear collections. She loved the versatility of leather, the way it could be cut and sculpted to form 3D shapes, but at the same time remaining soft and tactile. This inspired her to experiment with these qualities and to create something decorative and long lasting.

Louise has always been interested in process and technique and started looking at the way two materials can become one by cutting, intertwining or weaving them together. She became fascinated by the resulting light and shadow and started incorporating this into her work.

Breaking away from the frenetic, season driven world of high-fashion, Louise has found it incredibly exciting to have the freedom to nurture and develop a single idea to its full potential. Louise draws much of her inspiration from the natural world. She loves the way in which many objects such as a flower, a feather or a shell contain one simple shape that is repeated over again creating a whole new pattern in itself. It is these beautiful repeat patterns that Louise uses to create her collection of sculptural leather art works. Her work can be used as wall panelling, standalone art or decorative additions for pieces of furniture. Louise’s work is available for one-off pieces commissions and bespoke pieces.

Louise Heighes details:

You can support Louise Heighes by following her creative journey on INSTAGRAM: @louise_heighes